[jet_silver]

Where I used to live there was this little, poky cafe that was comfortable. It was very much in the European idiom. You could stay there as long as you liked, there was a pleasant muddle of abandoned newspapers and people came and went in a steady trickle all day long. During rush hours they would provide to-go cups for the train commuters.

Starbucks moved in, two doors down. They got most of the business because they were a) new, b) famous, c) not a poky little cafe. The place glistened.

But you can't stay long in a Starbucks. It is too cold, the seats are hard, the lighting is merciless and they go around picking up the newspapers. Starbucks is -not a cafe-. It is a store that sells coffee. Not -bad- coffee, mind you. However, the store that sold coffee got the yuppies and the poky cafe got people who like cafes.

UT, in a lot of ways capitalism and the principle of majority rule are the same. The result is everybody gets what the majority wants. In this case the poky cafe went under. Perhaps that is merely the survival of the fittest. I'm just tired of the fittest being the banal, the average, the mediocre - and I felt the town was damaged by that kind of leveling.

So - if you like Starbucks you can join a whole lot of people who do: Starbucks is successful and it is probably responsible for cultivating in some people a taste for coffee that would otherwise be lacking. And I understand it is penetrating the Midwest, a desert when it comes to decent coffee. But at the same time, be aware that there is a better way, a real cafe, and if you have one in your neighborhood it may please you better.

I am very sympathetic with Jaguar's rant, my previous bitchy comments notwithstanding.